The Red Knight

The captain looked at his brother – still so proud, even after such a thing happened, and all unknowing of his own pride. So easy to understand others the captain thought with wry amusement. And surprising sorrow. He couldn’t keep his emotional distance with Gawin.

‘Losing is not, in and of itself, a sin.’ The captain rubbed his beard. ‘It took me years to learn that, but I did. Failure is not sin. Wallowing in failure-’ he hung his own head ‘-is something at which I can excel, if I allow it to myself, but that’s more like the sin.’

‘You sound like a man of God,’ Gawin said.

‘Fuck God,’ the captain said.

‘Gabriel!’

‘Seriously, Gawin, what has God ever done for me?’ the captain laughed. ‘If I awaken after a sword thrust with the eternal flames burning my sorry arse, I’ll spit in the maker’s face, because that’s all I was ever offered in a rigged game, and I will have played it anyway.’

That blasphemy ended all conversation for a long time. The sun was setting.

Gawin rolled his hips a little. ‘My groin is bleeding again. Can you re-wrap it? I can’t stomach the nursing sisters wrapping my groin.’

‘Crap,’ the captain said. What had been a thread of scarlet was now a rapidly spreading stain – a pool of blood. ‘Jesus wept! No, I’m getting expert help.’ He laughed. ‘We’ll both likely die of the family curse – overweening pride – but I don’t have to actively help you die.’ He scraped his chair back. ‘Amicia?’ he called. ‘Amicia?’

She came so quickly that he knew – knew from her face, as well – that she’d heard every word they had said.

And she had a length of boiled linen in one hand and a pair of sharp scissors in the other. ‘Hold him down and this will go faster,’ she said, all business.

Gawin turned his face away.

‘Really,’ the captain said, when the bandage was off, ‘you should enjoy having such a beauty work on your groin.’

Amicia paused. He looked into her eyes for the first time in days and felt like a fool. ‘Sorry,’ he muttered weakly.

But she held his gaze. And then he saw her wink at Gawin. ‘A secret for a secret,’ she said, with that not-a-smile in the corner of her mouth. She bent over the long wound on the young knight’s leg, and when her lips were a finger’s width from his thigh, she breathed out – a long breath – and as she breathed, the wound closed. The captain saw the power flow through her, a great pulse of power, as great as anything he’d ever handled.

In his sight, it was bright green.

She looked up from her work and just a flicker of her eyes, and in them was a charge and a promise and in that flicker of a heartbeat he accepted both.

‘What did she do?’ Gawin asked. The captain’s broad torso was blocking his ability to see. ‘It’s all numb.’

‘A poultice,’ the captain said cheerfully. The room suddenly smelled of summer flowers. She was wrapping fresh linen around the wound, sponging off the fresh blood and the older dried blood.

Gawin tried to sit up, and the captain held him down. Under his left hand, something felt very wrong with his half-brother’s shoulder, and he rolled the edge of his shirt collar back.

Gawin’s shoulder was finely scaled, like a fish, or a wyvern. The captain ran his hand over it, and behind him, Amicia’s breath came in a sharp gasp.

Gawin groaned. ‘And you think you are cursed by God?’

Amicia ran her hand over the young knight’s scales, and the captain found himself instantly jealous.

‘I have seen this before,’ she said.

Gawin brightened perceptively. ‘You have?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ she said.

‘Can it be cured?’ he asked.

She bit her lip. ‘I really don’t know, but it was not uncommon among . . . among . . .’ she stammered.

The captain thought that an astrologer would have said it was a day for secrets, and their revelation.

‘I will look into it,’ she said with the assurance of the medico, and she swept from the room, the pale grey of her over-gown fluttering behind her.

Gawin watched her, and the captain watched her and then. ‘She used power,’ Gawin said quietly.

‘Yes,’ the captain said.

‘She is-’ Gawin let his head fall back. ‘I was headed north,’ he began. ‘The king had dismissed me from court for shooting my big mouth off. I fell in love – oh, I am telling this badly. I was trying to impress the Queen’s Maid-of-Honour. She . . . never mind. I said something I shouldn’t have said to the king and he sent me off to the Wild to gain glory.’ Gawin shook his head. ‘I have a great name as a bane of the Wild. You know why? Because after we killed you – well, we thought we did – I rode away to die in the Wild. Alone.’ He laughed. ‘A daemon attacked me, and I killed it.’ His laugh was a little wild. ‘Hand to hand. I lost my dagger in the fight, and I battered it to death, and so men call me Hard Hands.’

‘Pater must have been very proud,’ the captain muttered.